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Updated: June 14, 2025
It would seem an impossibility were I to admit my profits for that year, yet at the close of the season I started overland to Texas with fifty choice saddle horses and a snug bank account. Surely those were the golden days of the old West. My last act before leaving Abilene that fall was to meet my enemy and force a personal settlement.
He was known as Wild Bill of Abilene, a man whose past was never inquired into by even the most youthful newcomer, whose present was a thing that none ever saw sufficient reason to question, and whose future suggested nothing so much as the general uncertainty of things human. He was a man of harsh exterior and, apparently, harsh purpose.
Other herds were seen in our rear and front, and as we neared the Kansas line several long columns of cattle were sighted coming in over the safer eastern routes. The last lap of the drive was reached. A fortnight later we went into camp within twelve miles of Abilene, having been on the trail two months and eleven days.
Our best patrons that fall were small ranchmen from Kansas and Nebraska, every one of whom had coined money on their purchases of the summer before. One hundred per cent for wintering a steer and carrying him less than a year had brought every cattleman and his cousin back to Abilene to duplicate their former ventures.
By various excuses we were detained until frost fell before we reached the ranch, and a second and a third contingent of beeves were cut out for other deliveries, making it nearly the middle of October before I was finally relieved. With the exception of myself, a new outfit of men had been secured at Abilene.
With the advancement of immigration, Abilene and Ellsworth as trail terminals yielded to the tide, and the leading cattle trace of the '70's was relegated to local use in '84. The first guard was on the qui vive for the outfit whose camp-fire they had sighted the night before.
Petitions for Presidential suffrage with about 32,000 signatures had been secured to be presented to the Legislature of 1903. There was an increased vote of women at the spring election and forty-two were elected as county officers, for whom only men could vote. The State convention of 1903 was held in Abilene December 8-9 and Miss Kimber was again re-elected.
Shoot!" when it occurred to me that I had a pistol; and pointing it backward as I ran, I blazed away, killing the big fellow in his tracks. The other occasion was years afterward, when I was a trail foreman at Abilene, Kansas.
The territorial ranges needed many thousands of cattle for their stocking, and this demand took a large part of the Texas drive which came to Abilene, Great Bend, and Fort Dodge. Moreover, the Government was now feeding thousands of its new red wards, and these Indians needed thousands of beeves for rations, which were driven from the southern range to the upper army posts and reservations.
"I'm Walter Stone," said the rancher, somewhat mystified. "My name's Summers, Jack Summers, proprietor of the Rose Girl Mine." And Overland Red, erstwhile sheriff of Abilene, cowboy, tramp, prospector, gunman, and many other interesting things, proffered a highly engraved calling-card. Again he bowed profoundly, his hat in his hand, a white carnation in his buttonhole and rapture in his heart.
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